[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

There was a massive moth infestation at the stadium on the day of the final.



I remember really liking Chile at the last WC. I don't doubt that they'd give any of the big Euro teams a hard time but, to Soup Nazi's point, I'd never go so far as to say that they 'would' beat any of them, just because I don't think any team 'would' beat any other: could, definitely; should, maybe; but never would.

What's certainly true, though, is that none of the big European teams look that great at the moment and that it may well be true that the top South American sides have the edge on them at the moment. But you can't really base much on the outcome of two parallel tournaments, although it does make the next WC really interesting. I'd love to see Chile win that.

Having watched the Copa and tried to muscle through this bleh Euro my money is on Chile mos def

[demonrail666]

Predicting World Cup winners this far off is like predicting the next James Bond. Just when you think you've nailed it, a Tom Hiddleston appears. There'll be lots of Tom Hiddlestons emerging between now and 2018.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Predicting World Cup winners this far off is like predicting the next James Bond. Just when you think you've nailed it, a Tom Hiddleston appears. There'll be lots of Tom Hiddlestons emerging between now and 2018.

im not talking about WC, talking about a rhetorical match up right now based on this summer's results. i didn't read all of your post so i didn't see it was about WC

[!@#$%!]

gotze's first day back!

let's see what he does

[!@#$%!]

giant killer weekend at the bundesliga

i'd recite the names and scores but nobody will know what im talking about haa haaa haa

[demonrail666]

Try and watch a rerun of the Man City Man Utd game. One of the best matches I've seen in a while.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Try and watch a rerun of the Man City Man Utd game. One of the best matches I've seen in a while.

was just reading about it
he made them fly didnt he?

he'd to that at bayern too-- then they'd come crashing down, with injuries or defensive mistakes

is there a website that shows repeats?

[demonrail666]

Not sure about a website but there should be extended highlights on youtube pretty soon.

MC were flying for the 1st half hour and Mourinho definitely got it tactically wrong. He changed things in the 2nd half though, and really focused on stopping City from playing out from the back, with some success. That certainly seems to be City's weakness and will probably be picked up by other teams who face them. That and their new keeper, Bravo, who may be great with the ball at his feet but seemed a liability when having to do basic gk stuff. Pep praised him at the end for giving one of the best goalkeeping performances he's ever seen. His rationale seems to be that it doesn't matter if he'll occasionally cost them a goal (which was the case in yesterday's game) it's what else he contributes that makes up for it.

Only on Planet Pep

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Not sure about a website but there should be extended highlights on youtube pretty soon.

MC were flying for the 1st half hour and Mourinho definitely got it tactically wrong. He changed things in the 2nd half though, and really focused on stopping City from playing out from the back, with some success. That certainly seems to be City's weakness and will probably be picked up by other teams who face them. That and their new keeper, Bravo, who may be great with the ball at his feet but seemed a liability when having to do basic gk stuff. Pep praised him at the end for giving one of the best goalkeeping performances he's ever seen. His rationale seems to be that it doesn't matter if he'll occasionally cost them a goal (which was the case in yesterday's game) it's what else he contributes that makes up for it.

Only on Planet Pep

i bet he misses neuer like mad-- neuer did not fuck up that often, or did it very rarely, and then he'd do some craaaazy jump and fix it with a long outstretched hand you'd think it had defied the laws of physics getting there

bravo is a beast though, i think your press is too quick to jump at him when he's just arrived and has trained only a short period with the team

but neuer was a sweeper-keeper since before pep so there's that whole nature vs nurture debate.

i don't recall valdés style of play off the top of my head this beer-soaked sunday morning but maybe you can compare-- you've seen a lot more years-back barcelona than me

so anyway here's a question for a pep studies seminar (ha ha ha)

if valdés is not able to fit the very specific demands of his new jefe--will pep insist and try to torture him into shape? or will he adapt the team to what valdés can do best?

bonus points for meaningful connections to the spanish baroque and the holy inquisition

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i don't recall valdés style of play off the top of my head this beer-soaked sunday morning but maybe you can compare-- you've seen a lot more years-back barcelona than me

so anyway here's a question for a pep studies seminar (ha ha ha)

if valdés is not able to fit the very specific demands of his new jefe--will pep insist and try to torture him into shape? or will he adapt the team to what valdés can do best?

 

Víctor Valdés? Isn't he at Middlesbrough? Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

 

Víctor Valdés? Isn't he at Middlesbrough? Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?

ha ha i warned you of beer-soaked

i mean bravo, on the question part. valdés was pep's keeper before neuer. i dont know what is middlesbrough--sounds like a college

i didn't have TV before the 2010 world cup, didn't catch the champions regularly before 2012 i think, it was more like an occasional treat at a sports bar

anyway, enough about me, the question still stands with names corrected-- how far will pep go shaping bravo to his will? will he sublimate him or destroy him? that's what's interesting to think about.

and yes, the baroque and the inquisition-- still asking.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i bet he misses neuer like mad-- neuer did not fuck up that often, or did it very rarely, and then he'd do some craaaazy jump and fix it with a long outstretched hand you'd think it had defied the laws of physics getting there

bravo is a beast though, i think your press is too quick to jump at him when he's just arrived and has trained only a short period with the team

but neuer was a sweeper-keeper since before pep so there's that whole nature vs nurture debate.

i don't recall valdés style of play off the top of my head this beer-soaked sunday morning but maybe you can compare-- you've seen a lot more years-back barcelona than me

so anyway here's a question for a pep studies seminar (ha ha ha)

if valdés is not able to fit the very specific demands of his new jefe--will pep insist and try to torture him into shape? or will he adapt the team to what valdés can do best?

bonus points for meaningful connections to the spanish baroque and the holy inquisition

It was a terrible debut. Besides the poor handling, he could've easily been sent off at one point. but then, DeGea started terribly when he joined the Prem and look at him now, so we'll have to see. It was shocking though.

But for all Pep's eccentricities, I like what he's done at MC so far. They'll win a helluva lot more games than they'll lose, playing that way, and when they're in full flow they are great to watch.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

It was a terrible debut. Besides the poor handling, he could've easily been sent off at one point. but then, DeGea started terribly when he joined the Prem and look at him now, so we'll have to see. It was shocking though.

But for all Pep's eccentricities, I like what he's done at MC so far. They'll win a helluva lot more games than they'll lose, playing that way, and when they're in full flow they are great to watch.

i read about that red card etc.

when pep makes his team fly it's a magnificent sight. like quantum football-- there/not there and yet the ball moves as if by magic

when the chopper blades break or get stuck and the thing comes crashing down though it's a fucking disaster. it's like... he can't build in resilience. a fantastically quick and skilled boxer with a glass jaw.

so, with neuer, it was a match made in heaven. neuer already had the qualities and pep pushed him farther-- i think he made him a better keeper. in the sense that he exploited another set of abilities that were already there.

with bravo i've mostly seen him play with chile and he plays far out of his area but not as sweeper. i don't follow la liga so i got ter stegen at the champions. so i don't know bravo's abilities in a barca setting. on his goal with chile he's tremendous though. but a national team can't build the same sort of sophistication as a professional team. and the cognitive processing required to simultaneously be the last defender AND keep his mind on where his goalposts are-- that would overwhelm most people's CPUs. it's a massive feat. i've seen neuer skip a bit on occassion but he sort of snaps back.

how was valdés back in the day? i know you were a fan of that team. i read somewhere that pep wanted him back and chose bravo in the end. if you look at news, pep was already saying back in april that neuer would never leave bayern. so i'm sure he tried to play footsie under the table with him somehow... as a bayern fan, i'm glad that was quickly shut down.

ps- missed the bayern match on friday (work) so i can't report on ancelotti's evolution. champions begin tuesday, right? so you can see for yourself soon enough, and i'll keep an eye on this fabled man city. silva playing great football? i almost couldn't believe the accounts.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

a fantastically quick and skilled boxer with a glass jaw.

For a glass jaw, his win ratio throughout his career is probably on a par with anyone. Mourinho works with similar sized budgets and is known for building hyper-resilient teams but I'd say he's lost about the same amount of games over his career. I do agree that there seems to be something a bit more fragile about Pep's teams, but that may just be because we expect a team playing like that to be fragile. Certainly his record of success suggests that it isn't a big problem.

how was valdés back in the day? i know you were a fan of that team. i read somewhere that pep wanted him back and chose bravo in the end. if you look at news, pep was already saying back in april that neuer would never leave bayern. so i'm sure he tried to play footsie under the table with him somehow... as a bayern fan, i'm glad that was quickly shut down.

Valdes seemed solid but he never struck me as being particularly outstanding. Ter Stegen was actually Pep's 1st choice to replace Hart but that fell through so he went with Bravo instead. Although obviously, he'd have taken Neuer if he could.

silva playing great football? i almost couldn't believe the accounts.

This is a surprise to you?!?! He's a fantastic player. Admittedly he wasn't great last season, but that seemed to be true of the squad generally. The only real issue with him is that he does pick up his share of niggling injuries. Besides that, though, the guy's a class act.

[!@#$%!]

re: the glass jaw, the record for pep at bayern isn't that great. i know this is a bold statement, but hear me out.

the bundesliga trophy was always a foregone conclusion. he came in after heynckes won it all, and the domination of the bundesliga in his era was carried out by pilfering the opposition (gotze, lewandowski), not just superior tactics.

bayern is also the only team that can financially resist the allure of the prem. so when man city took away a genius like debruyne, who was the heart and soul of wolfsburg, wolfsburg collapsed. stuff like that isn't pep's doing-- it's bayern's long history of good fiscal management that allows them to keep great players.

so when pep was brought to take bayern to another level that didn't mean dominating germany. it meant dominating europe. it meant being above everyone else everywhere. at this, he failed.

yes, he'd beat roma 7-1 some day and make it look like a hallucination, but on another day he'd get creamed by real 4-0 or repeatedly destroyed by simeone. so in this sense his mission was a failure.

yes, he did some brilliant things no doubt, and gave the germans a good spectacle, and had some genius hires (xabi alonso, vidal), and is no doubt a great philosopher of the beautiful game, but when it comes to results he failed thrice at what he was brought to do, and that's ultimately the standard by which he needs to be measured. 0-3.

and yes, i'm suprised by silva's rise! and definitely want to see him. more about that later.

[!@#$%!]

uff, no time to go in depth about silva but basically because of the timing of my viewing habits i've either seen only short bursts of brilliance from him or a witnessed lot of disappointment-- never have thought of him as a consistently dominant player until i read about his rise under pep.

so i won't be missing the monchengladbach game today-- even though i expect "the other borussia" to get massacred, not only because of the disparity but also because pep knows them and should plunge the knives where they damage the most.

but yeah, super-curious about man city and silva today.

[The Soup Nazi]

Does anybody know of a site which lists artists' favorite teams? OK, "artists" is a stretch; a site like that is most likely to focus on any kind of celebrity, I guess. But still, it'd be cool to read. I understand Morrissey's favorite club (for some reason) is West Ham United, while Johnny Marr (more logically) follows Manchester City... And John Lydon is Arsenal all the freakin' way...

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Does anybody know of a site which lists artists' favorite teams? OK, "artists" is a stretch; a site like that is most likely to focus on any kind of celebrity, I guess. But still, it'd be cool to read. I understand Morrissey's favorite club (for some reason) is West Ham United, while Johnny Marr (more logically) follows Manchester City... And John Lydon is Arsenal all the freakin' way...

you could look up their facebooks probably, one by one... not sure if there's a place that sorts it all

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

you could look up their facebooks probably, one by one...

Yeah, that I'm not doing.

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Does anybody know of a site which lists artists' favorite teams? OK, "artists" is a stretch; a site like that is most likely to focus on any kind of celebrity, I guess. But still, it'd be cool to read. I understand Morrissey's favorite club (for some reason) is West Ham United, while Johnny Marr (more logically) follows Manchester City... And John Lydon is Arsenal all the freakin' way...

Here ya go

Barcelona, whew...